On 24 May 2021, the PRA published its Business Plan for 2021/22.

The PRA states that its strategy for 2021/22 will be delivered through strategic goals which it describes on pages 7 to 18 of the Business Plan. In summary the PRA’s strategic goals for 2021/22 are to:

• Have in place robust prudential standards, and hold regulated firms, and those who run them, accountable for meeting these standards (‘robust prudential standards and supervision’).
• Continue to adapt to changes in the markets in which the PRA is involved and pre-empt and mitigate risks to its objectives (‘adapt to market changes and horizon scanning’).
• Ensure that firms are adequately capitalised, and have sufficient liquidity, for the risks they are running or planning to take (‘financial resilience’).
• Develop the PRA’s supervision of operational resilience in order to mitigate the risk of disruption to the provision of important business services (‘operational resilience’).
• Ensure that banks and insurers have credible plans in place to enable them to recover from stress events, and that firms work to remove barriers to their resolvability to support the management of failure – proportionate to the firm’s size and systemic importance – in an orderly manner (‘recovery
• and resolution’).
• Facilitate effective competition by actively considering the proportionality of the PRA’s approach as it contributes to the safety and soundness of the UK financial system (‘competition’).
• Continue to deliver a sustainable and resilient UK financial regulatory framework following the end of the transition period arising from the UK’s exit from the European Union (‘EU withdrawal’).
• Operate efficiently and effectively by ensuring that resources are allocated to work that best advances the PRA’s strategy and reduces the greatest risks to the delivery of its statutory objectives, and by providing an inclusive working environment in which all staff can perform to their potential (‘efficiency and effectiveness’).

In his Chief Executive foreword to the Business Plan Sam Woods notes, among other things, that diversity is an important theme for the year ahead. The PRA will be working jointly with the FCA and will push ahead with work on improving diversity in the financial sector, with plans for a discussion paper this summer. In addition, as part of a wider effort across the Bank of England the PRA will take additional steps to improve the diversity and inclusion in itself, by attracting and retaining people from a diverse range of backgrounds and fostering an inclusive environment.